Alexander Kelle | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Chemical convention countdown

Alexander Kelle — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 09:08:39 -0500

In August, as suspicions about the scope of Syria's chemical weapons program came to light, a Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman acknowledged his country's willingness to use its horrific chemical weapons against any would-be foreign invaders.

Legally incapacitated, politically outmaneuvered

Alexander Kelle — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 01:39:28 -0400

When survivors of the 2002 theater siege in Moscow -- in which Russian police used a gas widely believed to be a fentanyl derivative to flush out terrorists -- brought claims before the European Court of Human Rights, the ruling came down with mixed results.

Chemical weapons destruction deadline missed

Alexander Kelle — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:47:35 -0400

April 29, 2012, marks the final destruction deadline for chemical weapons, according to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). The United States will miss this deadline, as will the Russian Federation and Libya. This inability to comply with a crucial treaty provision that the US Senate approved and the Clinton administration ratified back in April 1997 may be puzzling to some, but it certainly should not come as a surprise.

H5N1: Bungling dual-use governance

Alexander Kelle — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:26:10 -0400

Recent months have seen an increasingly confusing debate about new research on the adaptability and transmissibility of avian influenza A/H5N1, which was undertaken by groups in the Netherlands and the United States. Both studies were funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), and research results were sent for publication to Science and Nature, respectively.

The message from Strasbourg

Alexander Kelle — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:44:02 -0500

On December 20, 2011, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, ruled that the "use of gas against terrorists during the Moscow theatre siege was justified." It did not, that is, violate the right to